Tuesday, February 05, 2013

The New Castle News is reporting that Pennsylvania State Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi intends to introduce legislation that will award the commonwealth's electoral votes by percentage of votes received. Previous attempts to change the current "winner take all" system to one based on congressional districts were defeated. The latest plan would give a presidential candidate who won 40% of the votes in Pennsylvania 40% of Pennsylvania's electoral votes. (source: "State lawmakers to look at Electoral College" by John Finnerty, February 2)

Reince Priebus, the chair of the Republican National committee makes no bones about his support for changes like this and why:

"I think it's something that a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red ought to be looking at," Priebus said of the plan to change how electoral votes are granted. (source: Reince Priebus backs electoral vote change, but it's state decision," by Patrick Marley, Wilwaukee Journal Sentinal, Jan 31).

Pennsylvania's congressional, state house, and state senate districts, drawn without regard to county and municipal boundaries in convoluted shapes, are embarrassment enough. We don't need to make things worse by changing the electoral vote system, especially when it is being done for clearly state political reasons. These changes are not being suggested in states that vote Republican -- the electoral votes in those states would not be changed. So even if, nationally, a Democrat won the popular vote, he or she would still lose the electoral college vote because states that have been voting Republican would not split their electoral votes.

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